The legal industry is undergoing a significant transformation driven by the fusion of business and law, creating immense opportunities and challenges for law firms. Success hinges on adopting a "super listener" approach to deeply understand and proactively address evolving client needs.
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Hello and welcome to the 16th annual BTI
market outlook and client service
review. I'm Michael Rhinoeser, the
president and founder of the BTI
Consulting Group. Uh we have a great
crowd today. We're going to break a
record as soon as everybody is finished
logging on and we're pretty excited.
We've got a lot of things to cover
today. Um we have uh such a large crowd.
Unfortunately, we cannot take questions
live, but please send them to BTI
webinars at bti consulting.com and we
will respond after the session. There
will be a recording of today's session
available. We're hoping to get it out
first thing uh tomorrow morning. So,
that'll be our afternoon priority. Uh it
is afternoon here just outside of Boston
where BTI is located. It is 42 degrees
with a gorgeous blue sky. I mention that
because it is much warmer than it has
been for about the past four weeks where
we had some kind of polar event. Very,
very cold. But we're delighted to the
weather and we're delighted to have you
all with us today. Before we get
started, I want to send out a special
thank you to uh Jennifer Marcus who is
sitting quietly on the other side of
this uh uh presentation who is our
director of operations effective January
1 of this year. and um she is just
instrumental in making all this happen.
And Joyce Michelli, our lead
interviewer, who makes sure that
especially as we get close to the
webinar date, she is digging for all the
new insight and all the new thinking
that's kind of out there. So, um I
appreciate their efforts and um we're
going to really talk about a a number of
things today, but really how I'd like to
get started today is by talking about
physics. And when we talk about physics,
I really would like to talk to you about
very specifically fusion. Fusion is the
idea and the concept that it consumes
less energy than it produces. It takes
atoms. It takes the energy source and it
can produce more energy than it
consumes. This is a fundamental of why
the theory of the sun being as bright as
it is, the stars being as bright as they
are for as long as they are, it is the
power behind all of that. And there's a
couple of startups that have tried to
develop fusion commercially. Google has
actually entered into a purchase
agreement to purchase this uh power
source to help with their data centers.
So, it'll be interesting to watch on the
one hand, but it's going to have a big
impact on not just data centers and
energy and the world, but on law firms.
And you're probably asking yourself,
well, how can fusion have such an impact
on law firms? Well, in studying fusion,
there's two things that really are
important to understand. Fusion is the
idea that you take two lighter atoms and
you combine them to make a heavier atom,
which is the energy. So, if you take two
lighter things, end up with something
heavier, what you've got is you've
produced more than you've consumed. Now
if we think of those two um kind of
lighter atoms, one being law, one being
business that your clients are all in,
when they combine, that is creating
fusion. That is creating more of what is
out there than was there before it. That
means that the risks are getting higher.
The kind of dynamics of the way clients
are thinking about what they're doing is
changing. And it's resulting, if it's
kind of interesting because when you
think about this, um, for those of you
that read the press, there's a growing
trend to talk about nuclear verdicts and
they're so large and they're just so
unexpected that again, it's a fusion
type event. So, there's a lot of fusion
going on. And if law firms can tap into
that, there's going to be an
extraordinary opportunity. And it also
signifies how dramatic and how large
kind of the dynamics are changing in the
legal world and what's making it so
difficult for some and so amazingly
lucrative for others. There's a couple
of things that I think that underly
this. As I just mentioned, it's
exploding value in risks and outcomes.
So, if you're a um corporate counsel, if
you're a general counsel, if you're a
CEO, it's one thing to be worried about
whether or not you're going to lose a
claim for 5 million or $10 million. If
you're a large company, maybe that's
half a million dollars if you're a small
company. But now with the the fusion of
business and law, it's no longer about
am I going to get a fine, am I going to
lose a claim? It's about how do I
protect a revenue stream? How do I enter
a new market? How do I get the
technology that I need? How do I protect
what seems to be unprotectable? These
are changing what could be a measurable
claim in litigation or an M&A
transaction to revenue streams worth
hundreds of millions, if not billions of
dollars. If I'm selling something, I
sure want to help with something that
gets a hundred millions in risk versus a
million if I have the choice. This is
what business and law fusion is doing,
creating these immense um opportunities
for business if firms can figure it out.
It's collapsing time frames because when
you're talking about business issues,
there's no court dates. There's no uh
looking out months or planning for a
multi-year litigation.
CEOs want answers. They want to get into
the markets they want to be in. They
want their competitive advantage.
they're calling on their um corporate
legal officers much more frequently and
expecting answers when they call or at
least certainly guidance.
It's creating a whole litany of new
matters and and needs and clients, more
big wins, which is the opposite of the
value and risk because if you can save a
revenue stream that is, you know,
enormously larger than anything else you
might have saved the client. And as I
mentioned, it's changing things faster
than most law firms can see. And if
you're missing this, you're going to
watch a lot of high value, high rate
work go by because things are moving
just so quickly and it's dynamic and on
the one hand it's exhilarating. On the
other hand, it's a challenge to keep up
with. So if you're not looking for it
and if you can't put your hands on it,
then it's going to be a lot more
difficult to get all the benefits that
So how do we tap into this? Well,
there's a couple of things. We've been
asking corporate council to describe
their role for about, you know, I'm
going to say 10 to 12 years. And what's
really interesting is between 2024 and 2025,
2025,
what you had is a significant drop in
those clients that would say, "I'm no
longer primarily the client defender, my
company defender. I'm doing other
things." That doesn't mean they're not
defending the company. It means it's no
longer the top priority. Now look at
that. In the period of one year, we went
from roughly 71% to 48%. That's about
maybe a third drop. We expect that trend
to continue. And you can kind of see
that if you look out into the
marketplace and look at what's happening
with CLOS's, um, chief legal officers.
For those of you following the news, you
already know that Apple hired the chief
legal officer out of Meta about a month
ago. Uh Meta just announced that they
hired the chief legal officer out of
Microsoft. Microsoft promoted a new
chief legal officer within the last
month or so. um who is pivotal in
helping them make their business
decisions about open AI and structuring
that as well as some other business type
decisions which co-mingled and fused
with legal. So if you want to see what's
happening with the role of the CLLO, I
think that Apple, Meta, Google,
Microsoft are going to be kind of like
the bellweathers. They're going to be
showing you the direction that all legal
departments eventually will follow.
Probably tech will lead the way. So,
watching the turnover, watching your
clients hire, asking your clients if
they're going to be bringing in new
counsel, whether it be the CLO, the GC,
or associate council, is going to be
pivotal to positioning yourself to get
some of this new and exciting and
lucrative work.
Now the other side of the equation is if
you ask clients if they were trusted
adviserss just a year ago in 2024
um you know only about half said that
they were really trusted adviserss. Now
what's happened is corporate council are
getting so many calls from their top
executives, CEOs, board members. They're
getting it from, you know, EVPs, chief
operating officers, because the linkage
between the decisions on what they're
going to be doing with their
transformation digitally with AI and
protecting their own development is
intersecting with legal as we just
talked about. So where if you're a CEO,
where do you call? You call your CLO.
You call your corporate counsel and you
start discussing with them. I can't tell
you how many corporate council we have
talked to that have said they have
talked to their CEO, their COO more
times in the last 12 months than they
have in sometimes their 10 or 15 year
careers substantive conversations that
is. So what they're doing is by
providing this advice they're certainly
you know in embedding embedding
themselves in the business decisions but
it also places them where they need to
have almost a real time response to
their management. You can't say to your
CEO I'll get back to you in a few weeks.
I'll get back to you next week. They
want an inkling. They want direction
because they need to make business
decisions and and they just can't wait
for the competition to sit back and say,
"Oh, well, we'll figure this out, too."
Everyone is looking for that edge. So,
in order to kind of meet this need and
help clients, they're turning to their
outside counsel because they need to
respond quickly and they are looking for
the counsel that give them answers.
Doesn't have to be the final answer.
doesn't have to be the thoughtfully
detailed 42-page memo. They need what um
the author of the tipping point would
tell you is a thin slice, little bit of
information, little bit of direction,
maybe big direction depending on your
experience, but they want to be able to
hear from their outside counsel what
makes sense in the facts that they have.
And this is notice that's almost you
know 90% uh not quite doubling but
enough to certainly get our attention
and again tapping into this and helping
clients be the better trusted advisor is
a key to getting new business and
business development in this whole new
world that we're operating in.
And then finally, I also found it really
interesting that in 2024, 14% of
corporate council said they were growth
enablers. That has more than doubled to,
you know, we'll call that 39%.
So all of a sudden they go from being
defenders to enablers, their advisors,
and they're really finding themselves in
a position where they're doing things
that they just simply have not done
before. they've only heard about before
or maybe they've observed. So if you
think about it really what's happening
is you have a lot of corporate council
that were very much in their comfort
zone. They are you know they knew the
regulations, they knew the strategies,
they knew how to defend the company. Now
they're being kind of brought into the
growth zone. And for some corporate
council, they couldn't wait for this day
to happen. There's another group of
corporate counsel that are saying, "Oh,
wow. this this is stressful. This is
this is, you know, not what I thought it
would be. This is asking me to step
outside my knowledge base. And that's
something where we really need to, you
know, you can only get to that by
talking to your clients and listening to
your clients. It's a very hard thing to
pick up any other way. Now, the
listening to the clients part isn't the
real breakthrough. The breakthrough is
the kind of stress points the clients
are feeling about this. There's never
been a higher stress point for corporate
counsel before. So understanding that
could lock you into a client wherever
they may go because we're expecting a
lot of turnover based on the kind of
Apple metal Microsoft moves that I had
mentioned. And you know being able to
help them with their growth prospects
and help their CEOs only helps you your
firm and usually is going to lock in a
long-term relationship.
To get a better understanding of this,
we asked over 350 corporate council to
tell us the three words that kind of
describe their daily role. Okay? What
are they living? What are they feeling?
What are they experiencing? This is a
word cloud of the answers. The larger
the word, the more we heard about it.
The more towards the center, the more we
heard about it. So, you can kind of look
from the center, look out. Um, but
there's a couple anomalies. You can see
what was interesting is, you know, like
looking right in the center here, you've
got challenging, which is positive.
You've got challenged, which, you know,
is a little bit more stressful,
unpredictable, which can be both, uh,
fast-paced, rewarding, frustrating, um,
aggressive, fun. So you've got great
you've got clients all over the map um
and unappreciated. So you got them all
over the map. And if you really want to
get the kind of the the nonRFP,
the really lucrative juicy work, it's
being able to tap into these kind of
subtle thinking that clients have. They
know most firms can do the work. um but
they don't believe many firms understand
kind of where they're at and who really
can help them because this is underlying
all their decisions. If you want to have
kind of a different look, we took the
liberty of highlighting the positive
words in green. So you can see
challenging, interesting, dynamic,
rewarding, innovative. Um you know, you
don't need me to read these to you, but
you know, they're what you would expect.
But if you look at the red, which are
kind of the the challenging in more
stressful sentiment, you've got, you
know, there's the word stressful right
there that might say it all. We talked
about being challenged um as opposed to
challenging, uh latigious, aggressive,
overwhelming, frustrated,
which words are all there. And when you
put them in balance,
you kind of get almost a 5050 split.
When we did the quantitative analysis,
it's within one or two percent of each
other. So your chances of getting this
and understanding correctly and the way
clients want you understand it without
kind of a talking to clients in some way
and having more than just a cursory
dialogue, it's going to be a real
challenge. you've got a kind of a 5050
shot at getting it right. Given the
rates that you can get, given the amount
of business that is streaming into the
law firm world, I would want to be kind
of making sure that I'm developing
questions and I'm developing ways to
hear how clients are thinking. Client
feedback certainly is one way, but
there's other ways that you can be
having these conversations with groups
of clients, with individual clients. But
somehow getting this on the agenda is
going to be the difference between the
super high growth that Amal loves to
write about and the not so super high
growth which when it gets the publicity,
you know, it'll be popular but doesn't
get near the publicity that the growth
firms do. So this is something to be
thinking about. Now, what is the
absolute key? What is the the kind of
one behavior that will get you into the
middle of this? And for that, I would
like to get dedicate to the rest of this
presentation to my friend the lizard
here. Why would I be talking about
lizards? Well, lizards are believed and
many have scientifically proven that li
lizards are absolutely one of the best
listeners on the planet. They can hear
amazing things. They can synthesize
those things and they can put it
together to sense, you know, how they
kind of maneuver in their world. There's
even some science to suggest that they
go beyond listening and can integrate
environmental factors almost like a six
sense. So the question is is how do we
become lizardlike and become what some
people call the lizard is a super
listen. Not just a listener but a super
listener. And being the super listener
is the difference again between getting
that kind of inside track and being on
the outside wondering what clients are
thinking and doing. Couple of key things
to understand about the super listener.
A good listener will often listen to try
to develop new business where the super
listener knows that if they listen and
learn they're going to get the new
business. So they're going to focus on
the learning and that's one big
difference right here. Um they kind of
um listen to understand where most
listeners even active listening
unfortunately listening to respond
versus listening to understand because
the super listeners know that they will
learn. They will then understand.
They hear not only what's said but what
is unsaid. You know what was silent?
What wasn't brought up? what would you
have expected to be brought up? This is
like a second order analysis of what
you've heard and again adds context to
everything you just learned and are
trying to understand.
What's other you know the the other big
two are you know you're connecting the
dots between conversations and most
listeners even good ones will treat
these as independent events but to super
listeners these are patterns. These are
what's happening and sometimes they will
connect what is said and unsaid in
different conversations to be able to
kind of triangulate what clients are
thinking, how they're thinking, what the
risks are, what they're concerned about.
And if you want to kind of go through
that, that's the process. You know, some
will keep notes, some can do it mentally
because they're very sharp. But the
ability to kind of connect the
conversations and keep the track going
is the difference between that kind of
deep super understanding and just an
understanding. It's also important
there's something implied in here is
that this is
plural multiple conversations. The
conversations are ongoing.
Interestingly, they're kind of short as
opposed to long. There's a lot of, you
know, exchanges of information. They
tend to be, you know, highly, I call
them high calorie conversations. They're
short. There's a lot of meat in them.
And if you can put those together over
time, that puts you in the super
listener category. And then finally,
this is something that I've seen, I've
heard about, I hear about in our
interviews is that many times in a
conversation, we've all talked about the
awkward silence. And what super
listeners have learned is that that
silence, that awkwardness is often the
time clients need to process their
thinking. So, they have learned to use
that to give the client that space.
A good listener will often try to fill
that space because they don't like the
awkward silence. They're concerned that
their client, whoever it is they're
talking to, prospect, whoever it might
be, is uncomfortable because of this.
So, they will allow the client to
process the thinking. If it goes too
long or what they think is too long,
they may say something like, "Let's
share our thinking. What are you
thinking? Let's think out loud to kind
of create a safe zone to go into that
kind of listening zone, that super
listening zone away from breaking up
that process. This is often pivotal in
business development as you can develop
new services. you can develop kind of
new risks, new needs that the client may
not see. And this is extra helpful
because if you can get into a mode where
you're kind of co-solutioning with them,
you're working with them, that's going
to put you in a category that very few
firms are in. again drives you to the
place where that high business is on the
high rate business on the inside track
being able to get to that before any
other firm even thinks about it.
Now based on that what we've been doing
over the past couple of years actually
we've been doing it for more than 20 but
it coalesed over the past five or six
years is what are the different things
that really are driving the business
development right now. What is you know
the the things that make client go to
one firm or the other. So we went out
you know based on thousands of
interviews. We were gauging the
importance and influence of the core
kind of BD activities that are often
living in the marketing and business
development department. They're
behaviors that the attorneys the
partners engage in and they're you know
in some ways they're behaviors that
clients kind of observe or or more
importantly engage in. So, for example,
they'll observe as opposing counsel is a
big source of who I might think about
wanting to throw my business to. Um, on
the other hand, you know, if you're
actively networking online, clients
online together, um, that is networking
different clients to each other. You can
see you've got content sharing. This is
the trust factor along here.
This is the value factor. Now, in order
to get hired, we got to find a way to
deliver both, which is kind of where
this matrix comes in. This area up here
is where you've got high trust or higher
trust and higher value. If you can start
delivering on those, that's going to be
the place where business gets awarded
along the inside track. That doesn't
mean that these things out here aren't
important, because they are. Because
this is what's going to get you to a
point where you can start establishing
all the things that are with the purple
dots that are the highly influential.
They're the things that will get you
hired. There are the things that make
clients forget about all the other
things all the other firms that they
hear. It's a matter of you know the
relevance factor is high in here. The
value factor is high and the trust. So
this is something that's earned. These
are both earned as well. And this is how
clients are kind of thinking about
things. So when we look at this, what we
see is the kind of six factors that are
up here are you can see the top of the
list, the most important thing in any
business development situation is super
listening. The ability to get there to
get the business without super listening
is exceptionally difficult. Um that's
why you've got things like um RFPs are
only down here because that's just the
beginning of the process. They don't
know if you're a super listener and most
RFPs are not. Um you don't see super
listeners. You see a lot of talking of
clients as many of the people on this
presentation today already know. I
mentioned the value and co-solutioning.
And so if you're sitting there in that
awkward silence, what that may actually
be is kind of an unrecognized
opportunity to develop something with a
client. You can see that that brings in
value because you're getting to a
solution and it brings in trust because
your client is providing you with what
you need at the time you need it.
They're being authoritative. They're
being informative. They're providing new
information. It's a a really good setup
for kind of the super listener approach
to um getting business, but you can't
get there unless you've got the super
listening. You've got anticipating
needs. Now, what's great about this is
this easily links to co-solutioning
because you can help clients anticipate
through your questions and through your
listening. So, these will often work together.
together.
And what's happening in today's day and
age is innovative solutions are now
becoming, you know, super important
because there's so many new and novel
cases. There's so many new and novel
claims. Clients want the new and
innovative solutions they haven't seen
before. In addition, as we talked about,
the fusion of business issues and legal
issues require different thinking,
different matters, different approaches.
There may not even be precedents for
this or we have to apply old precedents
to completely new fact patterns. And
these are the things that show that
you're invested that you're willing to
kind of put in more work than most
because only 21% of law firms show up as
delivering these kinds of innovative
solutions. And then finally, you've got,
you know, creativity, which means that
you've got something new. You've got
something they haven't seen before, and
maybe, you know, it's going to be linked
to something innovative if that works.
And then finally, educating. There's
very few things that will create a bond
as strong as educating. And what's you
know as you think about you know
educating clients it's one of the few
things in the world that will deliver
that kind of dopamine high to both the
educator and the educate. That is
dopamine rises. You get a dopamine hit
when you teach somebody. You get a
dopamine hit when you learn something.
That's why people love their schools.
That's why people so much like to learn
and take online courses and
self-development. So, if you can find a
way to educate your clients, you're now
doing that kind of dual dopamine. Now,
just before we leave this, I have to
tell you that there's another dual
dopamine phenomena, which is actually
it's a dopamine phenomena, which is
talking about yourself
induces a dopamine hit. So, think about
that. Why do people talk about
themselves when they're pitching?
because you're getting that dopamine
hit. It takes some discipline. It takes
some understanding to realize you can
get the same, if not better discipline,
your do dopamine hit by educating
clients and they're going to get it the
same way. So, the dopamine can be a
double-edged sword as you look outside
of what we call the super listener
matrix up here. Um, you know, you've got
your strong BD kinds of activities.
You've got your thought leadership.
You've got an active LinkedIn bios,
content sharing, RFPs, networking your
way in. You know, we could go through
these everybody's famous, you know,
favorite ranking and directories, which,
you know, are kind of outside of that
box. But the point being is, you know,
there's think of this in two phases.
Here's how we can, you know, remain
relevant, if you will,
and here's how we can improve our
relevance. We can improve our kind of
lock into clients and you know the more
we do of this it tends to drive this but
nothing will drive what's up here more
than super listening.
So why is all this important? Well,
there's a lot of reasons. Long-term
success, strategic um positioning,
market positioning, but in the near
term, 61% of corporate council are
planning to increase their legal
spending by a pretty reasonable amount
in 2026.
So, if you want to get to that work and
you want to get to that work faster,
better with higher rates than everybody
else, that's going to take the super
listening. only 23% are going to hold
steady and you know that takes care of
roughly 84% of the market. There's
always going to be a portion of the
market that's cutting and you know that
means that your chances that your
clients are at least increasing or
holding steady are pretty good. So how
are you going to be able to um tap that
business without issuing thousands of
RFPs and without kind of um you know
doing mass emails? Well, it comes back
to picking your clients, picking the
best clients, picking the strategic
clients, and then finding ways to have
conversations with them. That is going
to have less effort than an RFP, be
highly effective, and at the end of the
day, more attorneys will like it than
not like it because they do like to
engage with clients once they may get
over any reticence to want to talk to
their clients about things like this.
Now what's interesting is if you think
about the 61% what you've got is also we
ask corporate counsel you know who wants
their law firms to use AI to get better
outcomes and coincidentally
that's also this almost the same exact 61%.
61%.
Now I know there's a lot of polarization
about the use of AI and you know one of
the things I'm personally finding
interesting is every blog post that I do
about AI I get you know equal numbers of
emails saying AI is um you know nothing
but the you know the the wizard behind
the curtain and I get an equal amount
saying it's going to change the world.
So it'll be interesting to see what
happens today. But the point is is that
most of the clients that are increasing
their spending, you know, what I want to
do is really cross out AI and really
emphasize this. What they're really
saying is they want better outcomes. And
if AI can get you a better outcome, you
ought to use it. It isn't really a
mandate that says, "Show us how you're
using AI to get us better outcomes."
They're just saying it's a new world. Go
back to the slide we talked about where
they're between the growth zone and the
comfort zone. Go back to, you know, the
the fusion that's taking place, the
overlap between business and law. Go
back to they're all advisors now. There
are so many of them advisers. They want
a better outcome. Period. If AI gets you
there, that's great. If AI is not the
vehicle to get there, they don't really
care. They want the better outcome.
Co-solutioning, which is one of the six
activities, is, you know, an immensely
uh effective way to get a better
outcome. Creativity, all the things that
are in that upper right quadrant of the
um the super listener BD approach is
what's going to get you the place where
you get better outcomes. And you know,
this speaks to the fact that clients are
not really necessarily feeling like
they're getting what they want from
about 71% of their law firms. So, if
you're in the 29%, good for you. You're
in the green. But you can never give a
client too good an outcome. So working
at this and working with your clients
and having this lead you because it's so
important to those that are increasing
their spending, it will define a path
right to where the increased spending
is. So think of this more as a BD
roadmap than a litmus test on using AI.
How do you get better outcomes? I
wouldn't take on the argument whether
you should or shouldn't use AI, but I
will tell you anything you can do to get
a better outcome is going to only get
you in a place where clients stop
thinking about other law firms as
essential. You will become the essential
law firm. So,
So,
where will this business be? What does
it look like? I want to go through a few
of the individual practices.
These are the practices we cover in the
BTI practice outlook report which we
released at the end of November for the
15 or 16 different practices that um we
are interviewing about and and getting
the details for roughly the third year
in a row. Everything is growing and
everything is you know not there's not a
lot over here in the rate zone. You can
see everything to the right is getting
better rates. Everything moving up above
this horizontal line is growing. So,
it's only a question of how quickly
we're growing. There's kind of three
different segments. You've got kind of
litigation employment, then you've got
this grouping, and then you've got some
others. So, you know, the opportunities
are certainly there. Depending on your
individual firm, you're going to want to
emphasize some of these over others. And
this is going to be, you know, the the
the road map overlaid with your kind of
co-solutioning and super listening to be
able to roll this out practice by practice
starting with employment, the fastest
growing practice. Um, you know, I can
tell you that out of more than 350
interviews, I don't think there was one
corporate council that didn't think any
decision they made about doing something
with DEI or affirmative action um was
not going to bring a lawsuit. They just
saw it as a class action or some kind of
action waiting to happen. And they're
still trying to figure out exactly what
they should be doing. They're talking
about new mental health claims, AI bias,
and hiring. Um, I've been doing this for
over 20 years, and for 20 years, I've
heard that wage an hour has finally worn
out its welcome, but clients don't think
so. It's alive and well and growing. Um,
if you're looking to develop business
here, you know, up until probably last
year, you had two major approaches. is
the labor only firms were coming at it
from a regulatory perspective being able
to help clients anticipate regulations
and changes. Um the general practice
firms were equally as strong and coming
in by industry. What you've got now is
some of the labor only firms are
introducing more industry kind of um
perspectives. The general practice firms
are getting more specific about tactics
and strategies by industries. We're
seeing industry play a larger role.
Industry practice, industry risk,
industry preference, um industry
strategies that is winning more work at
this juncture. Not that clients aren't
worried about all the regulatory changes
and all the regulatory conflicts, but
they see um the competitive aspect
coming in. And this is again where you
see the fusion of business and law. It's
where the industry knowledge is going to
be what they need to tell the CEO. CEO
doesn't want to know about the
regulations. They want to know what they
need to do and that's where the industry
knowledge comes in and uh it's
understanding the impact on operations.
So understanding that you know these
corporate counsel are now talking to
their CEOs regularly what they're doing
is they're saying I need to understand
the impact of whatever problem I'm
taking to you as my outside law firm on
operations. Um, is it going to, you
know, raise red flags? Is it likely to
hinder operations? Is it likely to
somehow, you know, make operations
smoother? Um, you see this a lot in
tech. You see a lot in financial
services. And you're you're seeing a lot
in manufacturing where they're adopting
uh digital or AI kinds of
uh litigation commercial litigation is
I'm going to say roughly one-third of it
is price sensitive twothirds of it is
you know strong to robust there are so
many new and novel claims that are out
there and more importantly or equally
importantly is that clients will tell
you you know nobody really wants to
settle anymore plaintiffs don't want to
settle excited about settling so they
see themselves digging in they're going
further in litigation matters than they
thought they might. It requires kind of
new strategy and new thinking on the
part of outside counsel to go that much
deeper. Um, some of the new issues that
you're hearing about that there's
serious litigation over is AI content
that is either governed or not governed
by contract with third parties, access
and use of data for training uh, models,
tech implementation failures which are
growing fairly dramatically. the joint
ventures and partnerships that are were
created three years ago are now
unraveling some of them anyway and there
could be some very big money. I mean
just look at the poster child for um
restructuring joint ventures
partnerships and investors would be open
AI which seems to every week raise an
enormous amount of money have new
partners who are competitors conflicting
each other um it's just uh imagine that
on every scale with so many different
JVS but that's or the investors and
that's the kind of thing that's going on
right down the line to some of the small
investments that companies have made. Um
their resupply chains are you know for
many of them trying to undo contracts
and supply contracts are really
challenging and again the way to get
this business is twofold. One is knowing
the impact on the business. Is it
affecting revenue? Is it affecting cost?
Is it affecting our supply chain? Is it
affecting tariffs? Is it affecting
regulatory issues in Europe where they
seem to be pretty anti- US? Knowing that
walking in the door, being fluent when
you walk in the door about where this
may go, what it could be, understanding
that it's no longer litigation, it's a
business issue. And the risk of a
business issue is just so quantifiably
higher that anybody who doesn't talk and
you don't necessarily have to know the
business issue as you walk in the door,
but in order to make an impact, ask.
Asking is just as good as knowing
because they'll tell you. But they want
to deal with law firms who know that it
has a business impact.
Now, we're going to talk a little bit
about um IP litigation. This I have to
tell you has become one of the most
aggressive parts of litigation. Um every
uh almost every single corporate council
that we interviewed want to just
obliterate and crush the other side.
They don't want to settle. They don't
want an emicable agreement. They want
the other side so they don't exist
anymore. Some of the big is oh and the
you know very few interested in
settlement anymore. It's all about
winning and crushing the other side. IP
leakage through AI is a big issue right
now. AI assisted patent trolls are are
something that are emerging as a
problem. Uh brand knockoffs are an issue
moving out of kind of like the the
patent range. And what really clients
want is
one the impact in knowing that certain
intellectual property has a huge impact
on the product roadmap, product
planning, revenue, market rollouts, um
market positioning and they also want
unfailing confidence that the whoever
they hire is going to have a winner take
all attitude. They want to create a
strategy that can deal with the
litigation, the idea that we don't want
to settle and um they kind of want to
know that you're in the foxhole with
them. You're sitting there beside them
and you've got the same level of
investment. That's what's getting the
kind of business especially in tech and
pharma. And now you're starting to see
it in some of the big manufacturing
global manufacturing companies where
there's largecale adoption of technology
class actions growing um again one of
the top growers claims are getting
bigger which are creating bigger cases
bigger fees it's interesting because PL
plaintiffs are
finding more ways to make claims from
the same situation I think four years
ago, a cyber breach would generate one
class action. Now they're generating
between, you know, two and six. So, um,
you know, the plaintiffs are getting
very creative. Um, you've got issues
around biological data privacy, which
are now coming up as some pretty large
class actions. What clients want in a
law firm is they want quick assessment.
That word fluent comes up again. Can you
walk in the door and know kind of what's
going on or assess it? They want
aggressive stands and they want
strategies to deal what they will call
pylon litigation because the minute you
get class action, it raises awareness of
perhaps other issues or regulatory
issues and this will really kind of be
the trifecta and the way to get the
class action work that's out there now
and understanding how big that it's
gotten and the impact in some cases of
the company's size on the balance sheet
itself. So um you know the opportunity
is there but clients um you know really
want to see that fluency that
firms are not intimidated by the size of
it that they can see all the different
things that are kind of can roll out of
the class action and being able to stand
up in front of a client on day one and
be able to talk about those things.
And then finally um it just wouldn't be
fun if we didn't talk about M&A. there's
super pent-up demand. Um, tech and
pharma, especially manufacturing, they
see their M&A activities as more
strategic than they have ever been. It's
enabling them to leapfrog competition.
It's enabling them to be able to be in a
place where they can change their
product line to take advantage of all
the technologies that might be out
there, whether it be AI or not, although
so many are. um you know they're kind of
looking for uh creative structures you
know right now you know kind of
Microsoft led the way the way they
invested in open AI um Nvidia is doing a
lot of things to make sure they can
acquire the assets they need the people
they need meta is doing the same thing
so they're looking for structures the
regulators are starting to catch up with
these structures so it's incumbent on
the law firms to be able to come up with
even newer structures to kind of stay
one step ahead said and being able to
deal with what could be hostile
regulatory agencies. Clients are just
are, you know, they're just not sure
what kind of reaction they're going to
get in so many different arenas. So
having that flexibility and then there's
a high education quotient. Clients want
to be educated by their M&A firms so
they're up to speed and they want to see
supreme confidence. the firms walking in
the door with that are the ones getting
those big M&A assignments that are, you
know, only going to get larger and
probably if interest rates get cut or
the economy gets picked up, uh, picks up
a little bit more, you're going to see
And then finally, bet the company. Um,
it's actually become a growth industry.
Um, when we first started doing this,
there were four reasons why something
would become bet the company. Now
there's 15. Um, some of them include
things like um, you know, decimating the
balance sheet, stopping operations,
halting a revenue stream, something that
could become criminal. What clients want
is the law firm that walks in with a
real-time assessment, knows the client
culture, knows their risk sensitivities,
their risk adverse, whether they're
where where their kind of risk soft
spots are, and focus on either settling
and defending at the same time. Um, the
firms that can walk in and talk about
what it means for the stock price,
balance sheet, and defending them are
much more likely to win the work than
those that talk about how many bet the
For those of you that have joined us in
one of the last 16
webinars or the six
um meetings that we had in New York
before we went to the webinar format,
this is what we affectionately within
BTI call the BTI hotspots. The blue is
where the need is the most acute. It's
growing and it is getting high rates.
The gray is where there's moderate
growth and the dark gray is where
there's low growth. You'll see there's
only one place for that. Um, if you want
to kind of understand this, the way most
of our clients use this is they will
take it by industry and see where the
hot spots are. If you're looking at
this, tech has 13, pharma has 12,
healthc care has 10, manufacturing 10,
consumer goods nine, transportation has
nine. That's a lot of hot spots. That's
a lot of acute needs in some very high
spending industries. If you look at it
by practice, M&A, you'll find 11
industries. Uh regulatory, you'll find
11. Litigation, you'll find 11. Labor
and employment 10. Class action 10.
There's a lot of hot spots on here.
Again, what most of our clients will do
is they will lay it out by practice and
or industry, work with their practice
group heads and try to map out which
clients fit into kind of which need and
how to go and engage in the super
listening and the co-solutioning and all
those things that will get you the kind
of business that you want to get. you
would get more work from two clients
than you would get from probably most of
the RFPs that you would send out in a
single year. But the point of this is
there's a lot of opportunity, a lot of
opportunity by industry, a lot of
opportunity by practice. And this will
kind of since industry knowledge is so
important right now because of the
fusing of business and law, this is kind
of your road map on how to do that.
So, how do you win in a law fusion
world? First, we highly recommend asking
what we call catalyst questions. So,
what's keeping this from moving faster?
What what can we do? Whatever the issue
is, how do we move faster? Because
that's what CEOs want. What's the most
important impacts on the business? Even
if you think you know, ask. You will
learn something from your client. What
are we underestimating? What are we
missing? Clients will tell you. They
will stop. they will think and can we
reframe this? How do we think about this
differently? How do we start from the
left instead of the right or the front
instead of the back? Clients, these are
all steps to start your co-solutioning.
Clients, I've had attorneys say to me,
"Won't clients think I'm not very smart
if I ask these questions?" But it's
interesting because clients think you're
very smart if you ask these questions.
They know that you can't get them a
better outcome until you answer these
questions. especially in today's world.
So, we would highly recommend not just
using them, training your partners to
the extent you can, even if it's just a
half hour. How do you ask these
questions? What kind of answers to
expect? How do you engage to create that
super listener profile?
Second, create an anticipation of needs
review. every 90 days, take one top
client, two top clients, put some smart
partners in a room and say, "What can we
anticipate for this client? What's
likely to happen?" Now, your 90day isn't
your anticipation period. You may look
out 90 days, 100 days, a year, but the
purpose is by having it at least once a
quarter, you institutionalize this idea
of we're always going to be looking
forward to what's going on in our client.
client.
focusing on the top clients of the firm
that will change the culture and how the
attorneys think about business development.
development.
Following client job boards and
postings, you know, it's great to track
them in the news and Google alerts, but
if you really want to know what clients
are up to, see what jobs they are
posting. Apple po when they were in the
trying to develop a um fully autonomous
car, they put all the ads on LinkedIn,
the most secretive company in the world
except for defense contractors. Um
openly put the jobs right up on the
postings LinkedIn um and then the Wall
Street Journal grabbed that and wrote a
whole story on it. Now, Apple doesn't do
that so much anymore, but the point is
is that you will learn where they're
headed, what to anticipate. You can use
that as a kind of a conversation starter
for your co-solutioning, for your
learning, for your super listening, but
it'll give you a perspective on how
clients view themselves moving forward
in a way that almost no other document
or no other piece of intelligence can.
Provide small format value every week.
Now, this can be two sentences. Recruit
an associate to help. Um, get, you know,
do one-on-one with one associate to a
partner, one associate to two partners,
whatever your ratio is. Get an associate
in. Have them come up with two high
value sentences per week, maybe every
two weeks about a client. That's it.
Maybe two clients, but clients love
small snippets of highv value
information. two sentences, high value.
Do that three weeks in a row. Do that
three months in a row. You will be
remembered. They will look for those
emails and it'll be way more effective
than any client alert that you could
possibly come up with. And it'll be
teaching your associates how important
it is to understand clients and it'll be
making the partners look better.
Finally, I would recommend you adopt one
of my favorite exercises, which is the
15minute why win and lose exercise. I
like to take no more than 10 or 12
attorneys, put them in a Zoom call or
put them around a table, and you say,
"I'd like each one in the room to tell
me about their best win. At least eight
of the 10 partners in the room will say
something to the effect of, "Oh, I could
see this coming. I had it wired. I know
this client like the back of my hand. I
knew exactly what was happening. I could
see this from a mile away. Then you go,
you ask the same attorneys, tell me
about your biggest loss.
And inevitably, you'll hear about how
some other, you know, not so bright firm
bought it. How, you know, the other firm
didn't know what they were getting into.
Oh, the corporate council, you know,
didn't have authority to hire us. our
price was too high, which was the famous
one. And um you know, my other favorite
is you know, the the other firm just a
bunch of Well, it was always
interesting because if you point out at
the end of that exercise that we always
win because we had it wired and we
understood it better than everybody else
and when we lose it was because the
other firms were largely idiots.
So, think about the power of that and
how to get them to focus on the super
listening. And that's kind of where we
are today. This we think and we're
seeing our clients are using this
approach and getting assignments that
are much much bigger than they might
have anticipated when they started this
and are kind of all in on how this goes.
So, with all that, you know, we think
there's a lot of material here that can
help you develop business. We certainly
hope that you find it the same way. We
appreciate you taking the time early in
the year and uh we invite any comments,
questions, thoughts. Please, that's my
direct dial. You can email me um and we
will be responding to emails starting as
soon as we shut down the webinar today.
So, I would like to thank each one of
you for joining us, wishing you the best
of luck in your super listening and look
forward to hearing how successful
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